A Week In Film #116: Solids

Vertigo
Thoroughly efficient Hitchcock, with great visual effects, and the reveal nudged way up the running order in order to wrench extra surprises right at the end. Sterling work.

You, Me And Dupree
Terrible reviews, but it makes I laugh – Owen Wilson slacking it, Matt Dillon at his most constipated, Kate Hudson making up the numbers.

Kelly’s Heroes
Well, you can’t turn it down if it’s up there on the screen whilst the gogglebox is on.

The Matrix
Never actually seen it – well, not in its entirety – and whilst it’s not really my kind of thing, it was decent enough, if not as good as Inception, Equilibrium or Dark City.

Rush
Years since I first saw it, but it stands up: young police recruit Jennifer Jason Leigh is recruited to be veteran undercover cop Jason Patric’s partner in mid-seventies smalltown Texas; hilarity ensues. Well, obviously it doesn’t, but it is fairly gripping stuff, based on the novel by Kim Wozencroft, who was a narc in similar circumstances, and who served gaol time for some of what she got up to. Pretty good stuff from one-time movie director Lili Fini Zanuck.

SEXISTPUNDITGATE: Andy Gray’s strip for young boys REVEALED!

This Andy Gray sexism thing – so I bought some old comics recently, the first few editions of DC Thomson’s early eighties boys’ paper Buddy, issue one of which came out thirty years ago, on 14 February 1981.

One of the strips is the ‘Super Personality Series’, a two page cartoon biography of a famous person (Sting, Kenny Dalglish, Kevin Keegan, Jimmy Savile, Barry Sheene – you get the picture); and in the first issue who should it be but Andy Gray, following him from his schooldays (“I must get my four Highers. A good education could be a help in later years”) through to Cup Final success in 1980.

Click the pic to see the strip full size.

BOOM! #008: The Molly Maguires

Our working class heroes dynamite the mine in The Molly Maguires.

Framed Documents #120: The Dead Zone

Diabolic would-be President Greg Stillson (Martin Sheen) sees his candidacy in tatters after a moment of cowardice is captured on the cover of Newsweek in Stephen Kind adaptation The Dead Zone:

No Future

for

Stillson

How Big Business is Changing Politics

A Week In Film #115: Pubic domain

The Great St Louis Bank Robbery
Plodding, and not with great acting (for the most part) or memorable dialogue, but notable for its imaginative mise-en-scène. We’re talking about a noirish heist flick from 1959, based on a real bank robbery, and with a young Steve McQueen methoding up an early lead role as a fresh-faced college kid caught up in naughtiness but soon out of his depth. Directed by documentarian Charles Guggenheim, so lots of vérité camerawork.

News of the World phonehacking scandal: “Edmondson definitely isn’t going to grass up Coulson”

So, Ian Edmondson, assistant editor of the News Of The World newspaper currently embroiled in the phonehacking imbroglio, has had his lawyers put out a letter to emphasise that the reason ex-NOTW editor Andy Coulson today resigned from his lucrative role as Tory spin doctor is definitely not that Edmondson was going to “turn Coulson in”.

Phew! As long as we’re clear on that – and thanks to Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger tweeting a copy of the letter there can be no doubt that many more people know that it would be entirely improper to so much as think that the reason renowned bully Andy Coulson jumped ship had anything to do with the possibility that ex-acolyte Edmondson was ready to spill the beans.

PSB LAW LLP
Media House,
4 Stratford Place,
London W1C 1AT
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7355 8900
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7355 8901
www.psblaw.co.uk

Our ref: EP/pw/E001-003
Date: 21st January 2011

URGENT

NOTE TO EDITORS/BROADCASTERS

Ian Edmondson (News of the World)

This firm represents Ian Edmondson and, following the resignation of Andy Coulson today, there has been suggestion that Mr Coulson resigned because our client “…was about to turn Coulson in…”.

This is to notify you that such an allegation is entirely false and defamatory and we have instructions to take appropriate action in relation to that statement and any repetition of it.

All our client’s rights and remedies are fully reserved.

Mr Edmondson requests that any and all enquiries directed to him should be addressed to this firm and, in that regards, the following emails will be of assistance:

eddie.p@psblaw.co.uk
polly.w@psblaw.co.uk

Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.

-END-

A Week In Film #114: Working the backlog

The Notorious Bettie Page
Slightly unsatisfactory but still enjoyable biopic of the 50s fetish/cheesecake model by Mary Harron. Gretchen Mol is likeable as the naïve but adventurous Bettie. Lili Taylor and Jared Harris both have memorable turns.

The Last Castle
Overblown, silly pre-9/11 (but no less flagwanky for it) military prison nonsense, with lantern-jawed Special Forces hero/demi-god Robert Redford (FFS) giving lesser, more deviant GI Joes a lesson in teamwork/self-respect/something after getting sent down for something or other and ending up in a barbaric brig run by deskjockey James Gandolfini. Meaningless piffle, directed by Rod Lurie.

The Terminator
Time-travelling killer robot! Michael Biehn looking kick-ass! Depressing future apocalypse! Third best police station attack ever in film!

Kansas City Confidential
Noir crime drama with wrongly accused ex-con John Payne chasing after the mask-wearing crooks who held up an armoured car leaving him with the blame. Efficient, though a little flabby in the second act (and for the most part it’s set in Mexico not KC).

Extreme Prejudice
Nick Nolte as hard-as-nails Texas Ranger, Powers Boothe as his best mate-turned Mex-Tex drugs kingpin, Michael Ironside as the leader of a secret, deniable Army unit; Maria Conchita Alonso is the solitary woman intruding upon this high testosterone ménage a trios.

Typical Walter Hill – sleek, energetic, with great craft, just very little plausibility or audience investment. Seems to have inspired the likes of Predator, Die Hard 2, The Losers etc. Some great work from various character actors (Clancy Brown, William Forsythe, Matt Mulhern, Larry B Scott, Dan Tullis Jnr as the soldiers, Rip Torn as Nolte’s Sheriff buddy).

A Week In Film #113: Something old, something new

Aliens
Can you go wrong with Jim Cameron’s up-to-eleven grunts-in-space extension to Ridley Scott’s own extraplanetary haunted house classic? Reckon not.

A solid cast of characters, a pretty believable future universe (with internal logic, dagnammit!), great in-camera effects, beautiful lighting, precise editing and a damn fine feel for pacing marks this out as JC’s finest. Almost too memorable for its own good.

Un Prophète
Directed by Jacques Audiard, who also wrote that early 80s satire on post-colonial French international policy starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Le Professionnel. I didn’t realise that when I watched this, though – all I knew was that it was set in a French prison.

It blew me away, up there with A Sense Of Freedom and The Escapist as gaolhouse flicks that really work hard to go beyond the clichés, to really say something interesting about the nature of confinement, of life. (I think I saw it trailed somewhere as ‘the French Scarface meets The Godfather‘, which is about as ridiculous as these interminable ‘A-meets-B’ film précis can get.)

It’s definitely a film where the less you know about the plot or the characters going in, the better. Just let it unfold naturally, because it is beautifully built. Some excellent acting, especially Tahar Rahim as a young, new convict, Nils Arestrup as an older Corsican gang boss inmate, and Abdel Bencharif as Ryad and Hitchem Yacoubi as Reyeb.

Vote for Italian Film Review in the Total Film blog of the year awards!

My giallo-obsessed internet chum Nigel is in the running for the Total Film 2011 Movie Blog Awards.

His Italian Film Review site is currently in second place in the Best Fan Blog category.

So if south European slashers-n-psychos cinema is your thing, get thee over and vote for Italian Film Review!

Hart broken: Dodgy right-winger David Hart dies on Twelfth Night

You know, that sometime-advisor to Thatcher, freelance strike-breaker, self-appointed guardian of the citadel, playwright, he who bankrolled failed drug dealer Paul Staines, etc, etc, etc…

Anyway, he popped his clogs yesterday. No mention from Guido yet.

A Week In Film #112: 2011 – A Speyed Odyssey

Mission To Mars
Astronauts head to the Red Planet, yadda, yadda, yadda.

As ever with a Brian De Palma film I check with the excellent film blogger and #1 BDP fan Scott Terek to see what he says about it over on CdM; imagine my surprise when I learn that he too thinks it’s a crappy movie.

It’s no 2001, no Sunshine, no Close Encounters, and not even a Contact.